


Light Whencesoever it May Come

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Game(s), Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-22
Updated: 2011-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-26 10:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the end of the game.  There's a lot of pain, and a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of fear, and a lot of hope.  Mostly, though, they're just free.  Focuses on m!Hawke and Anders in a friendship romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light Whencesoever it May Come

**Author's Note:**

> Janin is based on the Hawke I'm using for my current playthrough--he's mostly sarcastic/charming!warrior!Hawke with a big issue with templars due to his protectiveness of his family. I kind of wrote this all at once to get it out of my system, and I don't really know what I feel about it, and how that I've finished it, I don't really want people to see it, ever, but . . . even if it's not perfect, I'm going to post it anyway. I am proud of how I think I managed to capture my concept for Janin. My post-endgame scenario isn't that original, I'm afraid, but as far as I can see, they can either go overland or over sea to leave Kirkwall, and, well, in this game Isabela has that ship . . . .
> 
> Oh, and Ajax is the man's dog.

Anders had been quiet since the Gallows.  Nearly silent, to tell the truth.  He moved like it hurt him and hardly spoke and kept his eyes firmly down.  
   
It hadn’t started out like that.  At first he must have been running on pure hope and fear and adrenaline—Janin knew he’d been himself—because after Janin swore to him that they would be fugitives together, his bowed shoulders had straightened, and a light had come back to his hollow eyes.  He’d walked like he was wound tight with energy, every step practically bursting with it, and he kept glancing over at Janin as if he couldn’t believe he was really there beside him.  
   
But after they’d left Kirkwall on Isabela’s ship, Anders had grown progressively more silent, more withdrawn.  During the endless rounds of debate over where they should go to get away from Kirkwall (smoke in plumes rise in the back of Janin’s mind when he thinks of it, as if when he turns around he’ll see clouds of it following at his back, dogging him), he spoke only when spoken to, in a low, dull voice that made something in Janin’s stomach hurt.  When Janin edged over to his side and rested one hand on his back, he’d nearly flinched, then given him a sad, warm, _heartbreaking_ sort of smile, but his shoulders didn’t straighten, and he didn’t say a word.  
   
Janin found himself ending the conversation by simply declaring that they were heading for Ostwick, then grabbed his sword and stalked out of the cabin.  He found himself above deck before he thought, crossing the weathered wooden planks to brace his feet against the gunwale and glower out at the ocean as the wind whipped salt spray into his face.  The sea and sky were gray with clouds around him.  
   
He couldn’t even see the coast any longer; it had disappeared into the clouds and the open ocean.  No more smoke, except the gray clouds that twined across darker clouds like wisps of it.  Trailing after him.  He could still smell the smoke in his hair, on his skin.  
   
That was it, then.  He’d left Kirkwall for good.  
   
Some Champion he’d turned out to be.  
   
It wasn’t too much longer when he heard footsteps on the deck behind him.  Isabela, he recognized the sound of her easy, strutting footsteps, and not trying to be quiet, either.  “Captain,” he said, without turning around.  “The sound of your approach is like the lilting of doves above the waves.  If doves even fly above the waves.”  
   
She laughed.  “You get points for calling me that without me having to remind you, sweet thing,” she said.  “In fact, I might even forgive you for trying to give the orders on _my_ ship, back there.”  
   
Janin sighed, feeling his shoulders droop.  She had a point, of course.  He was so used to calling the shots that he hadn’t even thought, but this was Isabela’s realm, not his.  “Is there some problem with Ostwick?” he asked, and he just knew he’d sounded defensive, almost snarling.  _Wow, Hawke, way to take it like a man.  Watch you gracefully accept the leadership of others.  Maker, Carver was always right about you, wasn’t he?_  
   
It was all slipping through his fingers.  Again.  No matter how hard he tried to hold on.  He couldn’t even make a decision properly anymore.  And Anders . . . he’d wanted to make a _home_ for him, give him that, at least.  Someplace he could always come back to.  What did they have now?  
   
“No need to bite my head off,” Isabela said.  She crossed into his field of vision and propped herself against the side of the ship with both hands.  “ _I_ wanted to go to Llomerryn and put in for supplies in Hercinia, which I said.  Several times, as a matter of fact.”  She smiled with a certain wry fondness and shook her head at him.  “But you were a little preoccupied with Anders’ sad eyes, weren’t you?  I was watching you.  Watching him and very little else.”  
   
Janin grimaced and hunched his shoulders.  “Was it that obvious?” he muttered.  He braced his hands on the side of the deck and looked determinedly out over the sea, narrowing his eyes into the wind.  
   
“Uh, _yes_ ,” Isabela said with a laugh, then sobered.  “Look,” she said, then sighed and glanced out at see herself.  “Maker knows I’m not the best at all this . . . choose a side, fight for a cause business, but . . . .”  
   
“Says the woman who came back to save my arse with the Tome of Koslun,” Janin pointed out.  The grin felt forced, unnatural, on his face, which was a kind of frightening in and of itself.  He’d always laughed and joked, even when it wasn’t entirely appropriate, it was a part of him.  What would he do, who would he be, if he lost that?  
   
Isabela frowned, then shook it off with a graceful shrug.  “Yes, there is that,” she said.  “What can I say?  I just didn’t want to lose the aesthetic value of your pretty face.”  
   
“I am stunningly handsome,” Janin agreed.  “Almost unbelievably attractive.”  The joking ran hollow and he sighed.  His hands tightened on the edge of the ship until the wood was cutting into his bare hands.  “He won’t talk to me,” he said in a low voice.  “Even so much as a ‘get lost, I need the chamber pot,’ and if you can’t talk about bodily functions, what can you talk about?”  
   
“Sweetness, he probably has no idea what to say,” Isabela said.  “I know I didn’t after I . . . came back, and I watched you duel the Arishok, and _I_ didn’t even blow anything up.  And I’m not almost embarrassingly in love with you, either, no matter how pretty you are.  Did you see the way he was looking at you?  It was either pathetic or sweet, I can’t quite decide which.  Like you hung the moon, and the stars, and the sun, while you were at it?”  She held her hand in front of her chest and patted her impressive cleavage a few times in a gesture that Janin only belatedly understood to be miming the beating of a heart.  “It’s his whole heart bleeding and gooey and pitter-pattering in his eyes.  It’s really rather sweet.”  
   
Janin sighed and shook his head.  “Does he even _want_ me?” he asked before he even knew he was going to, and once the words were out he froze at how raw and painful and appalling, how _wrong_ , they felt in the cold salt air around them.  “Or does he want a protector, someone to fight his battles and stand at his side?”  He clenched his hands into fists.   
   
It didn’t matter, he thought.  What was he saying?  It didn’t matter.  He wanted to be with Anders; he wanted to fight with him and make a new world where Beth or Father or Anders never had to be afraid being taken away and locked up or abused.  He _wanted_ that, and he wanted _Anders_.  And yet he still wondered.  And then he remembered the light in Anders’ eyes when he looked at him in the Gallows, remembered _I’d rather be on the run with you than safe with anyone else_ , remembered that one desperate kiss in the entryway of the mansion when they’d gone back to get Janin’s things and make sure Orana knew where to go, Anders’ hands clutching at the hard cold surfaces of Janin’s armor, the feeling of his tangled hair, the scent of smoke caught in it, against Janin’s hands, under his fingers, his mouth a million warm feelings too tender and deep for words, and then he felt like the worst kind of unfaithful for ever doubting what Anders felt for him, whatever else.  
   
But it hurt, somewhere deep inside.  Leaving hurt.  He was leaving, again.  Something inside him was bleeding, and it like he could taste the rotting stench of the Blight in the back of his mouth, like it had never left.  
   
No.  This was _unworthy_ of him.  Anders had never asked anyone to fight his battles with him or for him.  Not once.  Even when Janin had fought him for the right to, he’d still tried to push him away.  That was _why_ he’d done what he’d done on his own.  Janin understood that.  
   
“Who says he has to want one or the other?” Isabela asked.  Her dark eyes were sharp, shrewd, and there was something soft in them, something warm and understanding.  “Sparklefingers hasn’t had a lot of experience in having someone standing at his side, I’d bet you five to one, except you’re not that much of a sucker.   _You_ offered, remember.  Can’t blame him for taking you up on it, can you?  I think he wants both your sword _and_ your heart.  Is that so wrong?”  She shrugged.  “Is it wrong for me to want freedom _and_ . . . well, to look at certain lanky, bronzed Tevinter elves while I have it?”  
   
Janin smiled a bit at that.  “How’s it going with Fenris, by the way?” he asked.  
   
Isabela’s grin was both delighted and positively devilish.  “It’s going _swimmingly_ ,” she purred.  “And I don’t know, I think he likes the idea of being a sailor.  My _first mate_.”  She gave the words a whole new meaning with her emphasis.  
   
Janin had to smile at that.  “Corrupting my friends and making terrible puns,” he said.  “You’re a bad, evil, incredible woman.”  
   
Isabela laughed.  “I try, big boy,” she said.  “I try.”  Much to his surprise, she leaned forward and took his face in both hands to kiss him soundly on the forehead.  She smelled of salt and sweat and leather and rum, and her hair brushed along his cheeks.  “Now go off to your poor sad man and try to make him smile, all right?  Tell him that if he stays that gloomy I’ll have to make him drink until I get at least one smile out of him.  Sailors are a superstitious lot, you know.  They don't like a depressing stormcloud on board.”  She made a superstitious warding gesture over her shoulder at the word storm, then turned Janin around and pushed him with one hand between his shoulder blades.  “ _Go_.  No more sulking around up here.  I have Captain-y things to do.”  
   
Janin went.  Because Isabela was right.  And his heart was right.  It wasn’t wrong for Anders to want a partner, a strong sword-arm at his side and back.  Wasn’t that what Janin had been trying to show him all those years, that it was all right to lean on him, that Janin _wanted_ it?  
   
And if Anders really wanted a partner, he was going to get one.  Actually, whether he wanted one or not.  Janin was going to become the best—worst—oh, whatever—revolutionary Thedas had ever seen since the days of Andraste, and he was going to do it with his glowing blue firebrand symbol of . . . blowing shit up beside him every step of the way.  
   
Even if part of him still wanted to punch Anders in the jaw for not telling him what he was planning.  And part of him still felt sick at . . . the _shock_ of it, the _knowledge_.  
   
But there was a little part of him that asked, _wouldn’t you have killed every templar in Lothering, in Kirkwall, to keep Beth safe?  And Father?_  
   
And he knew what the answer to that was.  He’d always known it.  It was wrong, and he knew that.  Cullen was a good man.  Thrask and Emeric had been good men.  Keran was a good boy.  Moira was a good woman.  And yet . . . .  
   
The Chant advised people not to wave around lighted brands, not to start fires, unless they were free of sin, Janin was fairly sure.  How could Janin be angry with Anders or Justice for doing what he would have done for a higher cause than Janin would ever have thought of?  Janin would have murdered templars, even sisters of the Chantry if he had to, to keep his family safe.  Anders had done it for every mage in Thedas.  
   
He found Varric before he found Anders, but one led to the other.  Varric was standing in the door to the cabin Isabela had told them they could use, saying, “I don’t know, give me a solid sewer under my feet any day over all this see-sawing.  You can’t tell me you don’t miss it.”  As he turned, he saw Janin coming and raised a hand in greeting.  “Hey, there, Hawke,” he said.  “So, is it off to Ostwick, then?”  
   
“I don’t know,” Janin said with a sigh.  “Ask Isabela.  She’s the captain around here.”  He looked at Varric for a moment, then smiled a little ruefully.  “Are you still sure you want to do this, Varric?  Follow me—Anders—both of us right into a revolution?”  
   
“Are you kidding?” Varric asked.  “Kirkwall . . . isn’t a good place to be right now.  I’ll wait until the shooting—and the exploding, and the fires, and the looting—stops.  Besides, if there’s one thing I know about you, Hawke, it’s that running around with you is never boring.”  He shrugged.  “I have to know the rest of the story.  I couldn’t live with the suspense.”  He jerked his thumb back toward the room he’d just left.  “Now go in there and cheer Blondie up.  I swear he’s about to make me cry.  And take notes or something while you’re at it.  I want to include this scene in my epic poem about you two.”  
   
“Is this the one about the hopelessly romantic apostate?” Janin asked.  
   
Varric grinned.  “Got it in one, Hawke,” he said.  “Don’t skimp on the details, now.”  
   
Janin shook his head.  “Oh, get out of here, Varric,” he said, but he knew there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, even if it still didn’t sit there as naturally as they usually did.  
   
“That’s my cue,” Varric agreed amiably.  “Cheer up, Blondie, Hawke’s here,” he called back, into the room, and then he turned, saluted, and started down the hallway, or . . . whatever you called them on ships, resting one hand on the wall to steady himself as he stumbled on unsteady legs.  
   
Janin took a deep breath and ducked into the cabin he’d just left.  Well, that was an entrance, he supposed.  You could always trust Varric to provide one, whether you wanted it or not.   
   
Sure enough, he found Anders inside the cabin, sitting on the bunk built into the wall, staring at the staff he held between his hands, almost leaning on it.  His slumped shoulders, the bowed curve of his neck, made Janin think back to the Gallows, of Anders still and defeated, waiting for Janin to decide to kill him.  Letting Sebastian (and, Maker, there was a fear he didn’t want to think about right then) explode without saying a word in his own defense, like he was dead already—  
   
 _If I pay for that with my life, then I pay._  
   
Janin’s heart clenched, seized up in his chest the same way it had then.  He closed the door behind him and tried to think of something to say.  
   
“You know,” he started, “I didn’t run away with you just so you could never speak to me again.”  
   
Anders’ head flew up.  His eyes were very wide, and Janin could see the whites of them around his irises, like he was a deer startled by an approaching hunter.  His hands clenched on his staff until his knuckles were white.  
   
“Or you could just not say anything,” Janin said with a sigh, after a moment passed and Anders remained silent.  Maybe Isabela was right, and he just didn’t know what to say.  He tried not to feel hurt by that, but it was hard—to think that after everything they’d shared, how close they’d been, that Anders wouldn’t know what to say to him.  “That works, too.”  
   
Anders hung his head.  Dirty red-gold hair flopped forward into his eyes.  “I’m sorry, love,” he said in a low, helplessly, hopelessly tired voice.  
   
And suddenly Janin was angry.  “Don’t _apologize_ ,” he nearly shouted.  “Maker’s _cock_ , Anders, we’ve been over this, all right?  I’m with you now because I want to be, because I don’t want anything else half as much, and just—you don’t have to apologize to me.  I _know_.  I know it hurts and I know you hate what you did and think it was right and think it was necessary.  I know that you hate that we’re in this situation now and I won’t have you tormenting yourself over it.”  He strode forward and grabbed Anders by his shoulders and yanked him to his feet so hard he wobbled and almost fell over and had to grab at Janin’s arm and shoulders to steady himself, his other hand on his staff.  “You’d rather be on the run with me than safe with anyone else, right?” he said.  “ _Right_?”  
   
Anders nodded.  His mouth had set in a tight line that wavered slightly.  His eyes were wide.  
   
“Well, the same goes for me,” Janin raged.  “Fugitives together, I said, sweetheart, and I _meant it_.”  He swept Anders forward, into his arms, and held him tight around his back and his waist, heedless of the staff where it knocked into his shoulder and stayed there, hard and uncomfortable.  Anders had lost weight in the last few weeks, from worrying himself to the bone over what he was about to do, no doubt, and he felt drawn sharp and edged like a blade.  Janin tangled his hand with the hair straggling out of Anders’ messy ponytail and held him as tightly as he could, memorizing the feel of him, too skinny and sharp-edged and real, the warmth and the trembling indrawn shock of breath, just _held_ him.  
   
Anders just stood there for a moment, stiff and unyielding, and then he drew in a hoarse, thick, hitching breath and the stiffness went out of his shoulders all at once, and he collapsed against Janin’s chest, his knees almost giving out from under him before he caught himself.  Janin could feel him shaking and kissed the top of his head, nudged his head to the side enough to kiss his temple.  His skin tasted like sweat and smoke.  “Together,” Anders said, and his voice was trembling, husky, it broke rather badly.  He swallowed.  “Together,” he said again, more firmly.  His hands slipped around Janin’s waist, tugging at cloth and then nudging up under his tunic and shirt to rest against bare skin, hands warm and simple and strong and worn with hard work and healing and destruction and trembling, just a little, clutching at Janin’s skin and curving around his back, and then he was hugging Janin back, just as hard, just as tightly.  “I didn’t . . .” he said, and then his voice died, and he seemed to struggle to find it again.  “I didn’t dare to hope for this,” he said.  
   
“Because I’m _so_ the love ‘em and leave ‘em type, right?” Janin asked, and he’d meant that to be funny, he really had, but it came out too brittle, too pointed, and he winced.  
   
Anders winced, too, and it made Janin feel like a heel, even despite the emotion and rage and . . . too many hot, tangled, boiling emotions to name that were bubbling away in the cauldron that was his chest right then.  “No,” Anders said, lifting his head.  “Because I had no right to expect anything from you after what I did.”  He took a deep breath, and his eyes were shining again, almost too bright in his face.  “This is a gift,” he said.  
   
“No,” Janin corrected, and tightened his hand on the back of Anders’ neck to make his point clear.  “This is a partnership.  It’s not a gift; it’s something for us to share.  We’re in this together, Ser Hopelessly Romantic Apostate.”  He bent to press their foreheads together and took a deep breath to steady himself.  “You got that?”  
   
Anders closed his eyes.  “Yes,” he said.  “I think I do.”  
   
“Really?” Janin pressed.  “Do you really?  No more shutting yourself up in dark cabins when I know how much you hate dark, close places that smell?  No more punishing yourself?  You’ll talk to me?”  He curled his fingers against the tender skin at the nape of Anders’ neck, stroked them through his hair.  “You know how I love your voice.”  
   
Anders gave a soft, helpless sort of chuckle at that.  “Oh, love,” he said.  
   
“Yes, sweetheart?” Janin asked, letting his voice go soft, quiet, to turn the teasing response into something a little warmer, a little gentler.  
   
Anders just shook his head and turned his head up for a kiss, brushing his mouth lightly over Janin’s at first before settling their lips more firmly together.  
   
“Mmph,” Janin said, and curved his fingers around the back of Anders’ head to pull him more firmly into the kiss, pushing his love into Anders with his mouth and his tongue and his lips, warm and wet and strong, because sometimes for all his words they never quite managed to say what he needed them to say.  They kissed for a . . . long time, as it went hot and wet and sloppy, and Anders was still clinging to his back with both hands and Janin still had his arms wrapped all the way around him and they were together and it was messy and it wasn’t perfect except in all the ways that it was.  
   
Janin pulled away, eventually, and kissed Anders’ nose, gasping for breath, and he couldn’t help but smile when Anders blushed, all the way up over his cheeks and nose into his ears.  “I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve made you blush like that,” he said.  
   
Anders scowled at him, and it was adorable and pouty and not at all threatening.  “You’ve never run off into the sunset with me before, you realize,” he said, and his voice was only wavering a little.  
   
“True,” Janin said, and grinned, tracing the blush with the backs of his fingers so he could feel how warm it was.  “So.  You’ll talk to me?  Promise?”  
   
Anders sighed and turned his head to press his cheek tightly into Janin’s palm.  “Yes,” he said.  “I’ll talk to you.”  
   
“Good,” Janin said.  “And no more punishing yourself.”  
   
Anders looked down, traced uneasy patterns on Janin’s back, just for a moment, before dropping his hands, pushing him away slightly.  “Most people would say I deserve to be punished,” he said.  
   
“You’ve been punished enough,” Janin said, and his voice was raw and angry and a little too loud.  “You’ve been punished your entire life for nothing but living.  You don’t need _more_ punishment; I don’t care what you’ve done.”  
   
Anders’ breath caught at that, but Janin wasn’t finished.  He caught Anders’ head between his palms and forced him to look him in the eyes, staring into glimmering honey-brown.  
   
“And you know what,” he said, “you know what?  Repeat after me, sweetness: _I will not be a flaming martyr because Janin Hawke loves me and he would—he would die if he lost me_.”  His voice broke in the middle of the sentence; he couldn’t help it.  He swallowed, and it hurt. He had to blink hard to keep hot prickles from washing up into his eyes.  
   
“Oh, _love_ ,” Anders said.  He sounded anguished.  “I—I—you know I can’t promise that.”  
   
Janin swallowed again, bit the inside of his lip and told himself that he _was going to fight for Anders’ cause with everything in him_ , that _they were going to be fugitives together_ , and if that meant losing Anders to the cause and fighting for it without him, then that was what it meant.  And if that meant fighting for freedom every moment of the rest of his life, then he was doing it for Beth and Anders and Father and Mother and Carver and Ella and Alain and all the boys who could have been Anders and all the girls who could have been Bethany, and even if he all he really wanted was to have Anders and Ajax and a few kittens and a warm summer’s day in Lothering and his family back, this mess of a system, of a society, was the reason he couldn’t have that, and he was going to bring it down, make it pay for that, if it was the last thing he did.  “I know,” he said.  
   
“I’ll be with you until the end, though,” Anders said suddenly, burning with reckless intensity, his voice fervent with it, “no matter what.  And if I die, know that I die loving you with everything in me, every good part of me, and most of the worst, and that—you were everything I wanted.”  There were tears in his eyes and in his voice, tears that weren’t falling, and Janin nodded and gathered him close and there were no more words between them for a very long time.  They just stood there, arms around each other, stumbling against each other when the ship swayed beneath them but unwilling to let go, until finally Janin led them both back to sit on the bunk, toed off his boots, and scooted back until his shoulders hit the hull before he lay down, pulling Anders with him, letting him have the outside of the bunk so he wouldn’t feel quite so closed in.  Anders sighed and lay down beside him, curling in close without needing Janin’s coaxing hand pulling him closer, to rest his head on Janin’s shoulder.  And they kept holding each other, even as Anders breathed raggedly into Janin’s shoulder and Janin’s hands pressed too tight around Anders’ hips, against his back, and Anders’ hand fisted up in Janin’s shirt.  And that was enough.  Janin listened to Anders’ breathing, all tatters, out of order and not quite sniffling, and held how much he loved him in the breaths and warmth and too-thin body of the man he loved beneath his hands, and the terrible thing that had been in Anders’ silence was gone.

The beginning of the other story.


End file.
